


The Best Someone

by lethargy



Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: F/M, Living Together, Masturbation, Missing Scene, Pining, lord forgive me for writing about teens i'm so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:15:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23991397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lethargy/pseuds/lethargy
Summary: Having Devi in his house is a blessing and a curse.
Relationships: Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Comments: 29
Kudos: 357





	The Best Someone

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the rating! Enjoy.

Having Devi in his house is a blessing and a curse. 

On the one hand, Ben finally, _finally_ has someone to eat breakfast with, someone to drive to school with, someone to vent about Mr. Shapiro with when he assigns the class yet another “outside of the box” project. (This time the assignment is to create a mock Twitter account for any U.S. president who didn’t have one, and it’s honestly bumming Ben out while not teaching him a goddamn thing.) He’s never had that kind of someone before, and it’s intoxicating.

And the thing is, Devi is not just a someone to do all of those things with, she's the _best_ someone. Ben loves Patty, he does, but Devi knows him, the real him, not the version of himself he puts on for adults. Devi doesn’t look at him with pity in her eyes, she doesn’t tell him to mind his manners, and she never, ever asks him to explain his jokes. Instead, she just hits one right back to him, as if they were playing a game of competitive ping-pong. (Which is a game Ben would absolutely win, if they did ever play, just for the record. He spent a summer mastering the sport when he was 11.)

He’d always known Devi Vishwakumar was his equal, but he never knew just how amazing it would be to be able to talk to his equal every single day. Ben finds himself feeling happy, happier than he can remember feeling in years. Maybe even happier than the time his dad took him on his private jet and he had a 30-minute conversation with Kendrick Lamar about the Clippers' chances of winning the championship.

He catches himself smiling for no reason at all, prompting Devi to whip out her front-facing iPhone camera to make sure there’s nothing on her face. (He told her there wasn’t, but she didn’t believe him. “You’d just love it if I embarrassed myself at school today, wouldn’t you, Gross?” she’d said, but she’d smiled when she said it, so he knew she wasn’t mad. Well, he didn’t think she was, anyhow. Her anger still catches him by surprise, sometimes.)

Which brings Ben to the reason having Devi in his house is a curse: He actually really would _not_ love it if Devi embarrassed herself at school. He knows it’s true, because the second she says as much, he thinks _No,_ with such immediacy and conviction, it scares him a little bit. Most of his life—since he was around 7 or so—some part of his brain has been devoted to thinking of ways to make himself look better than Devi Vishwakumar. As long as he could do that—as long as Devi had it worse than him—that meant he wasn’t a pathetic, friendless loser. To have that desire dissipate so suddenly, it’s, well, it’s a little disconcerting.

But just as Devi knows Ben, Ben knows Devi. After all, he’s been paying rapt attention to her for nearly a decade. And, well… she’s cool. He likes her. Kind of a lot, actually. So much so that a few sips of Trent Harrison’s disgusting ball punch had him throwing himself at her like the pathetic, friendless loser that he actually is. 

He’d barely slept at all that night, replaying every excruciating moment of his terrible attempted kiss again and again, agonizing over what he’d say to Devi when he’d have to see her at school, or worse, what Devi might say to him. What the fuck had he been thinking? She didn’t see him that way because of course, she didn’t! That’s not what they did! He didn’t see her that way, either! (Right?) Only now she thought that he did. She would either be disgusted by him and never speak to him again, or feel sorry for him and start being _polite_ to him. Ben honestly wasn’t sure which option was worse.

But when the moment he’d been dreading finally came, Devi didn’t seem to care in the slightest. In fact, she seemed to be more than happy to pretend the whole Ben-trying-to-kiss-her-twice thing had never happened at all. She wanted to _move in_ with him. 

Ben had said yes. Of course he’d said yes. And it took all of two days of Devi being in his house to get Ben to admit to himself that yes, he did see Devi _that_ way. He most definitely saw her that way. He saw her that way big time. 

Devi seemed perfectly comfortable in Ben’s house. A little too comfortable, really. She had no qualms about lounging on his dad’s $10,000 sofa in her $10 sweatpants or scarfing down the cheesy nachos he’d shown her how to make. She was utterly not self-conscious, and it was driving Ben a little bit insane. The very first morning, she had knocked his bedroom door in nothing but a towel, and cheerfully asked to borrow his deodorant. (He’d choked on his own spit and stumbled over a crack about her stench that sounded weak even to his own ears. She’d rolled her eyes and responded, “Please, you love it,” and god help him, he really, really did.)

Devi Vishwakumar was not an unfuckable nerd. He’d always known that, but now he _knows_ it. It is a knowledge that he is distressingly, intimately familiar with, especially right now, when he’s watching her bounce around his living room in shorts, an oversized T-shirt, and no bra. 

“C’mon bro, best three out of five,” she says. Whines, really. “You totally cheated with that last move.”

He has to smile at this.

“David, it’s not cheating to use the moves that come with your character. That’s literally just playing the game.”

She waves around her Switch remote. “Then teach me the combos for Jigglypuff already so that I can beat your ass in your own home!”

Ben, who has been perfecting his Super Smash Bros technique since the game first came out two years ago, sincerely doubts this would ever happen. But it’s nice to play in multiplayer mode for once, so he sighs and grabs the controller from Devi. 

“Here,” he says. “If you hold the joystick up and press B like this, Jigglypuff lets out his sonic singing.”

“Sonic _singing_? She grabs the remote back, and their fingers brush in the transfer. Not that Ben notices or anything. “Oh man, that is dope as fuck. Thanks, Ben.” 

She flashes him a smile, and Ben has to look away, take a deep breath, and try to focus on the game. If he’s not careful, she really will beat him. That would just be humiliating.

So, yeah, it’s a problem. Ben has a massive crush on Devi, she doesn’t see him that way at all, and now she’s constantly around, being extremely not-unfuckable and smiling at him like they’re real friends. Ben really doesn’t understand his life.

Ben tries to do the noble thing for the first few nights. He really does. He knows it’s probably wrong to, you know, _pleasure_ _himself_ —the phrase his mom had once used in the most horrifying conversation they’d ever had—while Devi is just down the hall. But who could blame him? Who doesn’t wear a bra while they’re smashing Super Bros? It’s a very movement-heavy game! She had to have known what she was doing!

That’s what Ben tells himself, anyway, before he gives in and furiously fucks his fist in the dead of night, images flashing in his mind of Devi’s towel dropping, Devi’s nipples poking through her too-big T-shirt, Devi straddling him, Devi fucking him with the same passion she uses to fight him– _oh god._

He feels guilty and disgusted with himself afterward, unable to meet Devi’s eye over breakfast the next morning, even though he knows he’s a 16-year-old boy, it’s hormones, it’s natural, blah blah blah. He’s read the puberty books. None have equipped him for having his crush live with him.

It is, in short, simultaneously the best and worst week of Ben’s life. 

He knows it can’t last. He knows Devi’s going through some serious shit right now, and that she needs to get back home to her mom. He wants that for her, actually. With every fiber of his being, he desperately wants Devi Vishwakumar to be happy.

So when Devi tells him that she’s going to skip out on her chance to say goodbye to her own father—that she’s about to blow off what could end up being the most significant healing moment in her process of grieving—well. Ben knows what he has to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Never have I ever written fic for a teen show before, but I binged this show in two days and just had to write this when I was done. Ben Gross is obsessed with Devi Vishwakumar! She borrowed his deodorant! Mindy Kaling, this is your fault.


End file.
